


Sometimes it's the quiet ones

by thirdspinsterfromtheleft



Series: Fictional women have periods. [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen, Menstruation, Only canon for season one-ish, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Simmons is OOC because hormones, life on the bus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 07:51:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14807277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thirdspinsterfromtheleft/pseuds/thirdspinsterfromtheleft
Summary: Skye goes to FitzSimmons for assistance, Fitz is a good friend, Ward bakes cookies, and Simmons swears. A lot.





	Sometimes it's the quiet ones

**Author's Note:**

> I kind of ran out of steam after watching most of season one, but I am always up for a good platonic friendship and FitzSimmons gives me the warm fuzzies. So don't expect this to be canon, but enjoy!

“Where’s Simmons?” Skye asked Fitz, coming into their lab.

“Stepped out. She’ll be back.” Fitz looked up from the thing he was sticking wires into, and added “Anything I can do? She might be a moment.”

“I can wait.” Crossing to a stool in front of an empty table, Skye sat, tucking her feet on a middle rung so she could prop her crossed arms on her knees. “What are you doing?”

“Charging a battery,” he muttered. “Or trying to. Simmons has been meddling with it again; I keep telling her- Ah.”

Skye, wondering why a flat oval that looked like it was made of fleece needed batteries, looked at the door to see Simmons slouch in, which was a new look for her.

“You have a guest!” Fitz said cheerfully. “And this is almost fixed.”

“Almost?” Simmons said incredulously. “What kind of engineer are you,  _ almost  _ fixing a stupid heating pad?”

“The kind who built it in the first place,” said Fitz calmly, while Skye stared at Simmons in shock. “Anyway, you are the one who broke it.”

“It wasn’t right,” Simmons muttered.

“I’ll work on it,” he promised. “Now be a good girl and sit there while your tea finishes steeping. And see what Skye needs.” He went to the the hob that sat on a counter against the far wall.

“Shut up.” Simmons flounced to the loveseat in the corner and curled against an arm. “My tits feel like they’ve been run over by a goddamn  _ truck, _ ” she moaned, then looked at Skye. “What do you want?”

Skye shut her mouth, which had fallen open while she watched the normally mild-mannered doctor’s uncharacteristic display. “So I guess I came to the right place for Midol?”

“You!” Simmons said, sitting bolt upright. “This is your fault!”

“My fault? What-”

“Jemma’s early,” Fitz interrupted. “She shouldn’t have to deal with this for another week. Except, apparently, when confined to an airplane in close proximity to another woman’s menstrual cycle.” He came around a table and handed Simmons a steaming mug.

“Oh. Um. Sorry?” Skye tried. “Wait, you  _ track  _ her period? Creepy, dude.”

“It’s not creepy!” Fitz protested. “And I don’t track it, precisely. I’m a genius. Details just stick in my head,  _ without _ much direction from me. It’s pretty obvious, anyway,” he added, gesturing at Simmons, who flipped him off. “Oh, as if an hour ago you didn’t inform me that blood and tissue were dripping from your cervix a full six days ahead of schedule and you had to raid your emergency tampon stash.” He looked at Skye. “I removed the profanity for you. You’re welcome.”

“Fuck off,” Simmons told them both.

“Look, just give me something for cramps, then I’ll go away,” Skye promised.

Simmons glared. 

Fitz sighed. “I’ll put the kettle back on.”

“So, uh, have you tried hormonal birth control?” Skye asked, looking away from Simmon’s intense stare. 

“Of course I have, I am not an idiot,” Simmons said. “Any SHEILD agent who is in the field and has a functioning uterus must also have a form of reliable birth control, it’s regulation.”

“Oh. Good to know,” Skye said, nodding.

“It’s in the handbook!”

“Right, right, must have… slipped my mind.”

“If there was a dose of estrogen which did not make me bleed like a stuck pig, I would be taking it,” Simmons went on, apparently determined to lecture even as she winced and wound herself into a tighter ball. “However, requiring bimonthly blood transfusions so I don’t faint walking up stairs is  _ not  _ a viable lifestyle.”

“That’s rough.”

“So she is stuck with a copper intrauterine device, which not only increases her cramps, it does  _ absolutely nothing  _ for her homicidal moods,” announced Fitz. “Luckily, the fun part only lasts about half a day.” 

“The fun part?” Simmons asked ominously. 

Fitz handed Simmons the fleecy oval he had been tinkering with earlier. “Heating pad, restored. Don’t try and mess with the settings again, let me do it.” 

He turned and tossed Skye a pill bottle. “Paracetamol and codeine! Two pills now, wait four hours before taking more.” He threw her a water bottle once she had placed the pill bottle on the table. “And drink all of that, hydration is good for you. Tea will be ready shortly.” He returned to his counter.

Skye watched him go, then turned back to Simmons, shaking the pills from their bottle. “You have him well trained.”

“I do not have him trained,” Simmons said with disgust. “If I did he would leave me the hell  _ alone. _ ”

“My mistake,” Skye said, and used taking the pills as an excuse to stop talking. Hormonal Simmons would probably be fun to watch from a distance, but that was an experiment to perform after her own cramps subsided.

“I am not trained,” said Fitz, going to his worktable and picking up something small and many-sided. “I merely have concern for my friend, and as such wish to do all in my power to make her more comfortable. She does not appreciate it, but since her current opinion of me would be exactly the same if I left her to brood alone, I choose to provide tea and heating pads.”

“And  _ mindless chatter, _ ” Simmons added, arranging said heating pad on her abdomen. She leaned back into the padded loveseat and took a sip of tea, curling both hands around the mug. “He never shuts up!”

“It’s nice of you,” Skye said to Fitz, shifting uncomfortably on her stool.

Fitz blushed. “I can rig a heating pad for you as well, if you-” he began, then cut himself off. “Quickly, get on the couch with Jemma. Go, now!”

Confused, Skye did as she was told, ignoring Simmons’ glare but sitting carefully on the opposite side so the other woman had plenty of space. 

Fitz dashed to the counter, then came slightly more slowly to the couch with a second cup of tea. “If you want to see trained, watch this,” he whispered as he handed it to her. He turned just as the hydraulic door opened. “Ward! So good to see you, come in.” 

Peering around Fitz, Skye saw Ward take two steps into the lab and stop dead, eyes flicking from Simmons to Skye herself.

“What do you need?” Fitz asked expansively, going back to his workstation. “Simmons and I have been working on this fantastic-”

“No, no, that’s fine,” Ward interrupted, backing out the door. “I’ll...It’s not important. I’ll ask… I’m going...” reaching what was apparently a safe distance, he turned and walked quickly out of sight.

Skye stared. “How did you get him to do  _ that? _ ” she asked Simmons, curiosity overcoming her caution.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Simmons grumbled.

“It really wasn’t; he came that way,” agreed Fitz. “I suspect a crazy ex-girlfriend. Or possibly a horrendously bitchy sister,” he mused. “Jemma really hardly did anything, just snapped a few times about how her uterus was trying to turn itself inside-out.”

“Is that all,” Skye said, looking at Simmons with respect. Snapping at Ward took balls. 

Or ovaries, apparently.

“It was,” Simmons said. “And he was being annoying.”

“You find rainbows annoying in this state, love,” Fitz informed her. “In any case, give it forty-five minutes and Agent Ward will send an electronic message informing me that there are freshly baked cookies waiting in the kitchen. We won’t see him for the rest of the day.”

“Cool trick. Wait, now I’m in on this,” Skye realized. “I don’t want to be that bitch on her period!” she protested.

“You don’t? It’s a monthly guarantee of delicious cookies!” Fitz said. “And they really are remarkable. Even Jemma agrees.” 

Simmons snorted. 

“Besides, surely you don’t mind the day off?” Fitz asked. 

“Well, normally. But I was kind of hoping on the cardio to, you know, calm things down.”

“Wait, does that actually work?” Fitz asked. “I thought it was a cruel lie thought up by the physical trainers at the academy,” he said teasingly, glancing at Simmons. 

She stuck out her tongue.

“I guess it’s different for everybody,” Skye sipped at her tea. “Hey, the tea is good,” she said with a little surprise.

“Camomile and mint,” Fitz explained, “With a slightly ridiculous amount of honey, given your usual tastes. Properly it’s a tisane, not a tea, but I don’t quibble in times like these.”

“Whatever it is, it’s good.”

“Ward probably won’t actually object if you go to him for training,” Fitz said. “Just wait until after he’s finished with the cookies.”

“If you interrupt him with the cookies, I will put every milligram of paracetamol on the damn bus under lock and key,” Simmons warned. Even if her threat was slightly incoherent, the look in her eye as she glared over her mug fully convinced Skye that she would do it.

“Got it. Training is pushed back until Ward finishes the cookies,” Skye agreed. She decided that if Simmons was going to bite, or shoot her with some high-tech revenge stun gun, she would have done so already, and settled herself back into the couch cushions. “Got any movies in here?”

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
